Federal appeals court upholds Obama health care law
By Douglas Stanglin, USA TODAY
Federal appeals court upholds Obama health care law
A federal appeals court in Cincinnati has upheld President Obama's health care law, the Associated Press reports. It is the first appeals court to rule on the issue.
The three-judge panel delivered a long opinion Wednesday with disagreement on some issues. But it affirmed a Michigan federal judge's earlier ruling that Congress can require Americans to have minimum insurance coverage.
More than 30 legal challenges have been filed and there are cases pending before federal appeals courts in Richmond, Va., and Atlanta. The case is expected to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the original lawsuit, filed in March 2010 by a public interest law firm in Ann Arbor, Mich., to test the law, a member of the firm argued that she was uninsured and would have to make burdensome choices to afford a policy in 2014, The New York Times reported.
Her attorney argued that the federal government was "effectively regulating inactivity" by requiring her to buy coverage.
Update at 1:10 p.m. ET: In a 2-1 decision, the court upheld the law's key requirement that most Americans carry health insurance or pay a penalty, The Wall Street Journal reports.
"Congress had a rational basis for concluding that the minimum coverage provision is essential to the Affordable Care Act's larger reforms to the national markets in health care delivery and health insurance," Judge Boyce Martin wrote in the 2-1 decision, the Journal reports.
Source: http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... care-law/1
